Traces the sexual and intellectual awakening of a Victorian Englishwoman, who marries an electrical engineer, and becomes caught up in the excitement of the new science and the charms of a country aristocrat
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In Victorian England, electricity is the latest scientific marvel, a fireless light that announces the dawn of a new era. But for Charlotte Mortimer, electricity yields something more. When she weds an ardent young engineer - a man who embraces electricity as both a vocation and a religion - she escapes the humdrum verities of her parents' lives. But her husband's commission to wire the estate of a country gentleman leads Charlotte to a disorienting swirl of new ideas, sensations, and passions. She discovers electricity of a different sort with the elegant and magnetically seductive master of the house. She plays with fire. And she goes too far.In this astonishing novel, Victoria Glendinning captures one young woman's progress through a tumultuous fin-de-siecle world - a world that mirrors some of our own late-century foibles. As technology advances and old values come into question, confused seekers read Darwin by day and attend seances at night. Amid these jolting social currents, Charlotte must discover her own powers and take control of her own fate.
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